Civic

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The Burma Refugee Family Network recommended finding local aid groups through regional Refugee, Asylee and Immigrant Forums. These forums coordinate refugee nonprofit organizations in San Francisco, Santa Clara County, and the East Bay.Also: We are still interested in hearing what you think about Civic — find a short survey here. Your feedback is appreciated!

In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Rent assistance applications outpace disbursements; booster shot eligibility; congregate shelter intakes paused; ghost gun lawsuit; DA and police chief discuss crime. Coming up: Hardly Strictly back to virtual; planning commission to consider certain neighborhood zoning changes; proposed low-density building goes to Planning Commission.

If you have five minutes, we would love to have your feedback on Civic! Fill out our listener survey here. Thank you!

If you have five minutes, we'd love to get your feedback on Civic through a quick survey. Your feedback means a lot, so thanks very much!

A report on the waste picked up by cleanup crews working along the nation’s beaches and shorelines from the Surfrider Foundation showed that almost 90% of the more than 80,000 pounds of trash collected in 2020 was plastic. The report also criticizes the use of bioplastics — an umbrella term that refers to plastic alternatives marketed as biodegradable or compostable. Rachel Coccia, plastic pollution coordinator for the foundation, and Holden Hardcastle, chair of the foundation’s San Francisco chapter, talk about beach cleanups during the pandemic and the problems with bioplastics.

In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Vaccine mandate for indoor activities; kids return to school; first of two DA recall efforts falls short on signatures. Coming up: The DA and police chief in conversation; SFMTA board to discuss Van Ness report findings; Health Commission will get an update on coronavirus actions.

The California Geological Survey creates maps showing which areas scientists expect a really serious tsunami would affect. The latest iteration of this map shows that the areas likely to be affected have actually expanded. Rick Wilson, a senior engineering geologist with the California Geological Survey and manager of its tsunami program, outlines some tsunami basics and explains how and why these maps are made.

California voters will be asked whether they want to remove Governor Gavin Newsom from office. If the recall is approved, there are more than 40 candidates vying to replace him, and they are listed on the same ballot. These ballots should arriving in San Francisco voters’ mailboxes around August 16. They can then be mailed in or returned in person. Evangelina Peña, co-manager of the outreach division at the San Francisco Department of Elections, walks voters through the steps, from ensuring they receive a ballot to filling it out to tracking its processing status online.

“Homeroom,” from director Peter Nicks and executive producer Ryan Coogler, debuts on August 12 on Hulu and will also begin a week of screenings at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater that day.

*Editor's note: This podcast was updated Tuesday, August 10 because the SFUSD announced a vaccine mandate for staff.*

San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing is a relatively new department, but it and its budget have been growing rapidly. The newly approved city budget allocates more than $1.1 billion over two years to the department. That money will be spent on programs including placing people in housing, finding ways to keep people who are in a precarious housing situation in place, opening parking sites for people living in their vehicles, family shelters, temporary shelters, and supportive services. Emily Cohen, interim director for strategy and external affairs at the department, explains how this budget was developed and where these investments are being focused.

The proposal to create a public bank for San Francisco, in order to provide an alternative to big banks for the city's investing and lending needs, is moving incrementally from concept toward reality. A working group of experts in different relevant fields, from finance to affordable housing, has now been selected to start work on a business plan for a public bank. Fernando Martí, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, and Sylvia Chi, principal co-author of AB 857, California's Public Banking Act and a member of the California Public Banking Alliance, talk about how this would work and what happens next.

The Manilatown Heritage Foundation will host a commemoration on Wednesday, Aug. 4. Details are at manilatown.org.

With the delta variant, coronavirus infections are on a sharp increase again in the Bay Area. California recently announced that health care workers and state employees must be vaccinated or get tested weekly and wear masks on the job. There have already been attempts to challenge the legality of similar mandates around the nation. Dorit Reiss, a law professor at UC Hastings who researches the law around vaccines and vaccine mandates, lays out what considerations employers and governments must weigh when it comes to requiring vaccination.

In the streets, in jails and other detention facilities and at its program sites around the Bay Area, the Young Women’s Freedom Center provides resources and support to girls, women, and transgender and gender non-conforming people. It provides training, internships, fellowships and jobs to help people affected by poverty, exploitation and violence develop their voices. One of the center’s core tenets is the belief that people who are affected by these systems are the ones that can and must lead effective change. Julia Arroyo-Guzman, a site director for Young Women’s Freedom Center, talks about her work and her journey to it.

The daily work commute nearly disappeared in March of 2020 as the Bay Area went into pandemic lockdown, and while travel on public transit continues to lag this Summer, many Bay Area residents are getting behind the wheel to get to and from their jobs. We talk to a CalTrans spokesperson about current traffic patterns and with a radio traffic reporter about what he has seen on the roads during the pandemic.

The pandemic and related precautions affected millions of restaurant workers around the country — unemployment in the restaurant industry shot up to more than 40% nationwide in April 2020, and to 60% in the Bay Area, according to the State of Restaurant Workers report from the advocacy group Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. Zoe Caras, national research associate for the organization, explains what the report found in the Bay Area and what those numbers meant for workers.

The city of Mountain View is prohibiting oversize vehicle parking on streets that are 40 feet wide or, which more than 80 percent of the city’s streets are. While the ordinance is described as a traffic safety measure, according to local reporting, the ban primarily affects homeless people living in vehicles. Last week, a group of civil rights organizations filed suit against the city over that ordinance, describing it as unconstitutional and inhumane. Michael Trujillo, an attorney with the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, one of the organizations bringing the suit, and Yesica Prado, a photojournalist who has documented the lives of vehicle dwellers for the San Francisco Public Press and who herself lives in her RV, give some regional context for the ordinance and explain what the lawsuit is about.

Some of the people most at risk for infection with the delta variant of the coronavirus are those who have not gotten vaccinated. Outreach workers with Code Tenderloin head into the streets with vaccines to inoculate people right where they are and to build trust with those still reluctant to receive the vaccine.

The majority of San Francisco residents have gotten vaccinated against the coronavirus. But a lack of trust in the healthcare system or trouble making an appointment or going to a vaccination site may still pose barriers for some, especially people experiencing homelessness. Dr. Margot Kushel, a physician and researcher who directs the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, is part of a collaborative multi-organizational effort to bring the vaccines to people out on the streets.

The delta variant has arrived in the Bay Area. Though San Francisco's case numbers seem to be rising, most residents are vaccinated here. But people under age 12 aren’t eligible yet, which raises the question of what to do in schools. San Francisco will require all students to wear masks indoors, but not outdoors, while at school. Dr. Susan Philip, San Francisco’s Health Officer, returns to Civic to talk about the details of the current mask rules, the delta variant, and the importance of vaccines. **Update, 7/16: A few days after this episode published, Bay Area health officials made a joint recommendation that everyone wear masks in public indoor settings, regardless of vaccination status. They cited an increase in COVID-19 cases and increased circulation of the delta variant.**

Bruce Wheeler was diagnosed with COVID-19 last spring, but never fully recovered, suffering a variety of symptoms of what has become known as "long COVID." He's not alone — according to a UC Davis overview of a handful of recent studies, more than one in four COVID-19 patients develop symptoms lasting for months, even if they had mild cases. Bruce and Dr. Brian Block, who has helped treat him and who is one of the founding clinicians at UCSF’s COVID recovery clinic, talk about the condition and what's still unknown about it.

Read the full report here.

Research has shown links between residential racial segregation and a plethora of health concerns, from asthma to obesity. Segregation can also be a factor in wealth — household incomes and home values in white neighborhoods are nearly twice as high as those in segregated communities of color. These are some of the key points laid out in a new report from the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. And segregation seems to be worsening. The institute’s Roots of Structural Racism Project found that among U.S. metropolitan regions with more than 200,000 residents, 81% were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990. Stephen Menendian, assistant director and director of research at the institute, talks about tracing structural racism to its roots and the importance of addressing segregation.

As some California cities move away from gas in new buildings to address climate change, and after recent news that gas lines in some San Francisco buildings have been encased in concrete during seismic retrofits, we explore the hazardous tradeoffs of burning fossil fuels in buildings. Sasan Saadat, a research and policy analyst with Earthjustice, gives an overview of the pollution created by gas use and explains some of the shortcomings of fossil gas alternatives.

California's eviction moratorium protecting tenants who have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic was set to expire at the end of June. Legislators extended it, but the state law supersedes local pandemic eviction protections, and prevents city legislators from adding new ones through March of next year. Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative, unpacks the details.

San Francisco and California have formed advisory committees to formulate a plan for reparations for African Americans, to study and work to make right the harms done by slavery, segregation and systemic racism. Rev. Amos Brown, senior pastor at Third Baptist Church of San Francisco and president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP is on both committees and discusses California’s legacy of racism and what form reparations could take in this state and city.

As companies mull bringing staff who have been working from home back into the office, mechanical engineer Steve Taylor's consulting firm has been fielding questions about making offices as safe as they were pre-pandemic through upgrades to HVAC systems. That's not possible, he says — but if workers wear masks, existing systems that meet ventilation standards we already have should be enough to bring the risk of infection to acceptable levels.

In recent years, the mills and foundries that receive recyclables from Recology have stopped accepting material with more than one percent impurities, so the sorting facility at Pier 96 must work at a very high standard. On a tour of the sorting center, we learn what happens when things that don't belong in the recycling end up there, and what to do about things that are difficult to recycle, like plastic bags.

As Vice President Kamala Harris visited the US-Mexico border on Friday to tour a detention facility and meet with people who have made the journey to the United States, we talked with San Francisco resident Soledad Castillo, who left Honduras at age 14. She is one of the narrators in a Voice of Witness oral history collection called “Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Central America.” She shared some of the hardships she faced and how she was able to pursue her education despite them, and reflected on US immigration policy.

California's remaining restrictions pertain to mega-events, unvaccinated people, healthcare facilities, and settings serving children, and the guidelines say little about social distancing. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of pediatrics – infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University, and Dr. Lee Riley, professor of infectious diseases at the School of Public Health in the division of infectious diseases and vaccinology at the University of California, Berkeley discuss the relative benefit of social distancing in concert with other prevention measures and under what circumstances distancing still makes sense.

With the state emerging from a pandemic that prompted emergency action and investment to bring people living on the street indoors, and after recent pledges from state and local officials to invest into solutions to homelessness, local nonprofit leaders discuss what long-lasting solutions might look like. In these highlights from a recent panel discussion hosted by the nonprofit At the Crossroads, Joe Wilson from Hospitality House, Mary Howe from Homeless Youth Alliance, Charles Lerner from At the Crossroads, and Julia Arroyo from the Young Women’s Freedom Center outline the scale of investment that might be needed, and why decisions should be made with input from people with lived experience. .

Local and state officials have been announcing their intentions to invest billions into addressing homelessness, and two reports laying out strategies to bring the majority of unsheltered people in the region indoors have made headlines in recent months. Tomiquia Moss, founder and CEO of AllHome, describes the need for more investment across different interventions to reduce the pressure to prioritize those who have the most complex and chronic needs over those who could exit homelessness with shorter-term help, or over prevention strategies. AllHome’s regional plan for reducing homelessness by 75% over the next three years calls for simultaneous investment in interim housing, permanent placements and prevention strategies.

Editor's note 6/30/21: The original audio for this episode was uploaded in error. We have replaced it with the correct file. Apologies for the confusion.Hear more of The Finch Files here.

Alcatraz Island is once again drawing tourists from around the world. Visitors arriving on the island will see signage proclaiming “Indian Land!” as it would have appeared 50 years ago. A reminder that beyond the stories of prison escapes “The Rock” was the place that lit the spark for the native American rights movement in North America. We talked with the daughter of one of those occupiers about that legacy.

More than 20 years ago, a filmmaker documented the lives of a group of people in San Francisco exploring gender and what it means to be transgender, to create a film called "Gendernauts." Now Monika Treut has directed and written a new film, “Genderation,” in which she follows up with these same protagonists to see how shifting social scenes, political climate and individual circumstances of their lives have affected them. Treut and poet and documentary protagonist Max Wolf Valerio reflect on changes in the city and the nation.

Hummingbird Farm provides organic food as well as medicinal plants, and serves as a community and education hub in particular for young people. Tere Almaguer, an environmental justice organizer with PODER, which operates the farm, talked with “Civic” about how the drought has already had an impact, and how the group has adapted to years of inconsistent rainfall.

“No Straight Lines” screens at the Frameline film festival, digitally Jun 17–27 and in-person at the Castro Theater on Sunday, June 27.

Freedom of information advocates and journalists have criticized a number of instances in which law enforcement officers arrested, detained, or even injured reporters at work covering protests in California. In response, state Senator Mike McGuire authored SB 98, which aims to codify journalists’ right to access demonstrations. As the proposal makes its way through the legislature, David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, discusses the context for the bill and some of the ways in which current protections for journalists fall short.

Members of San Francisco's Street Crisis Response Team show up to situations when someone is experiencing a mental health or substance-related crisis, as an alternative to police response, which can escalate such situations. Dr. Angelica Almeida with the Department of Public Health, Chief Simon Pang from the fire department, clinician Shari Lachin and peer counselor Miguel Levya talk about how the team engages with people in distress and why the work is so important to them even if there sometimes aren’t enough resources to meet the need.

With droughts expected to continue and worsen in coming years, water managers are exploring conservation approaches. Laura Feinstein, sustainability and resilience policy director at the urban think tank SPUR, explains the difficult choice between attempting to create separate drinking and nonpotable water systems, or developing robust wastewater recycling systems, and how more efficient water management has also led to improved energy efficiency and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

With vaccination rates on the rise and lockdown restrictions lifting, audiences are returning to indoor venues. For community cinemas like the Roxie Theater, reopening is emotional. The Roxie’s executive director Lex Sloan says limited seating for recent screenings sold out quickly, filling her with hope that cinephiles are eager to return in person. Sloan also reflects on the upcoming coming Frameline film festival and improvements being made to the theater.

Commuters are slowly returning to BART after ridership fell to around ten percent of pre-pandemic levels for several months. Now the transit agency is ratcheting up service, with plans to return to the pre-pandemic schedule by August 30th. We discover how the agency has survived the pandemic and what lies ahead with BART Media Relations Manager Jim Allison.

Demonstrators in Hong Kong have been demanding more democratic freedoms, as well as an inquiry into police use of force and the release of detained protestors. As millions have taken to the streets and participated in other actions, clashes between police and protestors have gotten violent. Here in the Bay Area, Hong Kongers have been paying close attention, organizing solidarity actions and strategizing about how to stay involved from afar. Ken and Claire from the Northern California Hong Kong Club share their experiences watching the protests unfold and organizing locally.

California is back in a drought, and in many parts of the state the drought is extreme. San Francisco’s residential water use is among the lowest among large cities in California, says Steven Ritchie, assistant general manager for water for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. He explains where the city gets its water from and how it's used, and why San Francisco is fighting state restrictions on the use of Tuolumne River water.

According to a ranking from the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, all San Francisco residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park, but residents of neighborhoods where most people identify as people of color have access to 56% less park space per capita than residents in neighborhoods that are predominantly white. Alejandra Chiesa, Bay Area program director for the Trust for Public Land, and Maya Rodgers, senior project manager at the SF Parks Alliance, talk about the health benefits of parks and the significance of inequities in parks access.